In its Sixth Year, Trego’s Backwoods Accordion Festival Aims to Squeeze
This year’s event includes a vendor fair, kids activities and a variety show featuring mini sets by various players
By Mike Kordenbrock
Undaunted by the massive Under the Big Sky Music festival with its array of big-name headliners taking center stage in the Flathead this weekend, the Backwoods Accordion Festival in Trego plans on offering its own version of live music and fun this Saturday.
Now in its sixth year, the festival is still going strong, according to Pom Collins, one of the festival’s organizers, and an accordion player himself. This year’s tag line is “We Aim to Squeeze,” and the point is driven home on festival posters with an illustration of a boa constrictor wrapped tightly around an accordion.
This year’s event includes a vendor fair, kids activities and a variety show featuring mini sets by various players. The festival is free, but donations are encouraged. There will be food and drink for purchase on site.
The lineup of musicians set to play at the festival’s venue, the Trego Pub, includes headliners the Carpathian Pacific Trio, and opening acts Accordion Bob, Shrimp Louise & the Gumbo Rhythm Makers, and a duo known as Ray and Shirley.
Collins is especially excited about the Carpathian Pacific Trio, which is made up of Portland musicians Jack Falk (clarinet), Andrew Ehrlich (violin) and Courtney Von Drehle (accordion). The Carpathian Pacific Trio’s core repertoire is made up of klezmer music with roots in the Yiddish-speaking communities of eastern Europe’s past, but their music isn’t tightly bound to convention or history with how they arrange it. They also play from a range of other musical traditions found throughout the Carpathian region.
Over the decades as musicians, the members of the group have had opportunities to play across disciplines, with Falk having played with jazz ensembles, and Von Drehle’s having immersed himself at times in the world of Cajun music. Their third bandmate, Ehrlich, had previously lived in Texas, where he had played orchestral music, and Hungarian fiddle tunes.
Falk said that he grew up in Portland hearing klezmer music at home, and sometime around the late 70s or early 80s, when he was mainly playing alto sax, he got a small band together to start playing it casually. That was around the time there was a resurgent interest in klezmer, which Falk said had been sort of dormant for a couple of decades outside of isolated circles. Eventually, he fell in with a klezmer band of which Von Drehle was already a member, some 25 years ago.
The accordionist of the group, Von Drehle, like so many musicians said he started out with the guitar and rock star aspirations.
“I didn’t succeed in becoming a rock star,” he said. “But I did succeed in falling in love with music.” After the guitar, he switched to saxophone, and played with a number of bands, touring and picking up other gigs, like playing for modern dance classes. It was at one such class that the teacher gifted him an old accordion.
“One, I like humorous things, and the accordion has the potential to be quite humorous,” Von Drehle said of his affinity for the instrument. “Also, having played in bands, there are complex, social-dynamic situations, and with the accordion, you can play all the music on your own and you can have a more independent life.’
He said the instrument has been considered by some as “basically an orchestra that you strap to your chest.”
In describing klezmer music, Von Drehle said that it has a distinct emotional quality, which he likened to a sense of “joyful melancholy.”
“It’s hitting sort of two extremes or two divergent emotions at the same time. Both emotions that, you know, people feel strongly, and exude life,” he said.
Falk said that the music is largely played in a minor key, but he emphasized that it’s not sad, but rather possesses an emotional conflict.
“Is life joyous? Yes, it’s joyous. Is life gentle? No, it’s not always gentle. How do we reconcile all of our experiences? Not just for us personally, but in a world that can be challenging. How do we manage to persist with joy?”
The music largely comes from the Carpathian region of eastern Europe. Some of the klezmer repertoire comes directly from Jewish liturgy, but Falk said that there are a wider, diverse set of influences “musically, textually, and otherwise.” And while klezmer is at the heart of the band’s output, they delve into other genres, like Romanian pop music.
“There’s a lot of variety of stuff that interests us, and stuff that we work up,” Falk said. “Our rehearsals are a wonderful opportunity for exploration.”
The Backwoods Accordion Festival at the Trego Pub in Trego starts Saturday, July 19, at 2 p.m. For more information, go to backwoodsaccordionfestival.com.